Mikhail Osipovich Mikeshin

Born Feb. 9 (21), 1835, in the village of Platonovo, in Smolensk Province; died Jan. 19 (31), 1896, in St. Petersburg. Russian graphic artist and designer of monuments.

Mikeshin studied at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts from 1852 to 1858. Using Mikeshin’s plans (done more or less as detailed graphic sketches), a group of sculptors produced the monuments Russia’s Millennium in Novgorod (unveiled in 1862), To Catherine II in Leningrad (unveiled in 1873), To Bogdan Khmel’nitskii in Kiev. All three were done in bronze and granite. Stylistically, Mikeshin’s designs are related to late 19th-century Russian academic sculpture. They often combine patriotic enthusiasm with the ideas of autocracy and Russian Orthodoxy. Mikeshin illustrated the works of Gogol, Pushkin, and Shevchenko.